Day 112: Toilday the 8th, Abadius, 4708

I woke up very early again to Jonathan's cooking. He brought me tea and some smoked bear meat along with the rations. It was a really hearty meal. I went to work checking up on the bikes and my gear. There was a fair amount of road wear and such. For some reason, the light of both of the bikes' headlights was even brighter than they were before. I got to work repairing what was needed. This mending cantrip was extremely helpful in that regard.

I went to check in with Faunra and Jonathan stopped me, telling me that she was busy right now, that she was working on transferring the enchantments from some of the items that we found to other items. I thanked him and went to study my books and focus on the upcoming day. We would be storming a tower and dealing with giants, so I looked into what I could do to make up for the differences. I didn't know what I could really change up from my normal preparations, so I decided to throw some runes to see if there was anything that they could tell me.

The runes came back kind telling me that today would bring a great amount of struggle, and that if we pushed too far too fast, we would not all end up coming back. That wasn't extremely useful, but you work with what you got. Pushing too far too fast could mean a variety of different things, but here I am guessing that they are referring to the fact that we have limits on what kinds of arcane and divine miracles we can bring forth. I'm limited in bringing forth no more than two of the time dilation effects that Faunra can generate. I'm not certain if the effect will be much different if I do it, or how long that it will last, but that gives me a general idea of my capabilities.

Thinking on everyone else, Jonathan has a limited amount of aetheric energy that he can bring forth. That amount increases as his sturdiness increases, but he still has a hard limit at this point. Faunra is fairly good to go with her arrows and her spells, and I was certain that she had tricks that I wasn't even aware of yet. Dame Rebekah was a wild card, as she had access to divine miracles and was a competent swordswoman to boot. But even the both of them had their limits. We needed to ensure that we would be able to know these limits and know when to pull back. I think that Faunra is up and ready to go. I guess we will see how this turns out now.

We travelled across the plains VERY early on in the morning, just to get to the Valley just as the sun was rising. Faunra said that she expected that this would be the most auspicious time. I confided in her the results of my rune-casting. Faunra said that she could expect as much, and that she would ensure that we had a way to get away. I thanked her, and noted that this wouldn't be the first time that we had to come back to a place that we were cleaning out. Faunra nodded and asked if I had any ideas.

I told her that I had made a series of six grenades, that each had a special coating on them that might be an interesting surprise, if the situation demands it. Faunra asked me how I planned on delivering them, and I told her that I would either throw them myself, or have Niddler do it from on high. Faunra smiled and noted that this would definitely be an option to sow chaos and discord. I nodded and noted that we just needed to be sure that there were not any avian predators that could hurt Niddler, as he wouldn't be well defended. Faunra noted that we could make him invisible. That would allow him to get into position fairly quickly. I replied back that is the case unless there are dragons about. Faunra nodded, but noted that we can still keep the option available if we truly need.

When we got to the area, we were still trying to be fairly sneaky, throttling back on our bikes and utilizing an illusion of the area to cover our approach when we got close enough. We watched a two story, but fifty-foot-tall, tower with a fire in the back. It was being tended by a pair of even more vacant than usual hill giants. A twenty-foot-tall, double the height of the hill giants, muscular giantess with dark gray skin, fiery red hair, and sharp fangs on her lower jaw came walking forward, slowly, as if overcoming a hard night of carousing. I could sympathize. Dame Rebekah looked like she was ready to completely murdalize this giantess. I asked her why and she told me that the giantess absolutely reeked of evil and got ready to charge. I told her that if we were going to do this, we needed to do it right and looked at the rest of the group.

I put my pistol in my holster and swung my rifle on its strap. I quietly activated my shield, and pulled out my machete. I told Jonathan and Dame Rebekah to handle the larger giant while Faunra and I focused on the slack jawed Hill Giants. Everyone agreed and we worked out a bit of a plan. We didn't want the Hill Giants to be able to set forth a signal, so Jonathan would use that as his "projectile". Dame Rebekah would come out swinging, and I would be the wall for Faunra, at least until Dame Rebekah and Jonathan were done with their portion of the fight.

We lined everything up just right, with Dame Rebekah and Jonathan taking out what I later learned was called a Taiga Giant. Faunra and I raced up to our pair of giants. I hacked at mine with a desperate abandon, having studied it closely while we were getting ready. Faunra dropped it with her trademarked (or it should be) ray of frost after hitting it with one of her well placed arrows. She fired off a pair of shots into the other giant, but didn't drop it. It took only a second to come rushing at Faunra, completely ignoring me. I didn't have the chance to get out in front of it, but I did get a chance to take a swipe at it as it passed, opening up a burning cut in its side.

It was reacting with a speed I had never seen a hill giant move at. I swear that I saw another arcane rune appear on its hide as it passed me. The Giant's Great club came up like a #3 Wood and took Faunra off of her feet, I was enraged and rushed to strike at the giant. It was presenting its backside to me and not even really paying attention to me at all. Not that this would have made one lick of difference to me at this point. Except I was a vindictive bastard. I could almost see the giant's chi meridians flowing through its body. I jabbed my machete into what I figured would be the chi pathway that would block off most of the use of its legs. With the burning of my machete searing in the muscle, I could tell I had pissed it off.

The Giant reflexively turned around to face me. I could see that it had nothing left in the tank, but was still going to try to attack me. That was the point. I knew that I needed to keep it away from Faunra. I just needed to keep its eyes on me. It swung its mighty great club at me and I waited until just the last second to slide to one side out of the way. The wound that I had delivered just a few moments ago flared up as I dipped under the great club as it tried to strike me again. I opened up a great gash in the thing's stomach as I stepped out from below where it would fall. I heard a thump behind me as the one that had dropped before fell a second time, with a pair of arrows sticking out of its chest. Jonathan and Dame Rebekah caught up with us after that, after they had disposed of the body of the other giant. Jonathan wasn't sweating aether, so I wasn't thinking that he lifted it telekinetically.

We recovered ourselves and Dame Rebekah went to check on Faunra. Dame Rebekah pulled out a wand that we had recovered very early on in our travels and used it on Faunra. I took it from her, at her insistence, and used it again on Faunra. I handed it off to Jonathan, who took it from me and did the same. Jonathan passed it right back to Dame Rebekah who gave her one more usage of the wand. After that fourth usage of the wand, Faunra was completely healed from the damage. I reflexively decided to activate my mending powers to restore her armor to full functionality. It looked like it had taken some of the hit for her, but it still wasn't enough to stop the whole thing. I would have to fix that in the next upgrade.

We looked over the encampments and and tried to decide our next move. Jonathan sniffed the air and told us that there was a large group of ogres up ahead. I looked to the others and they all seemed to be ready to go. I thought that this would be a good point to wade in at. We snuck in and kept Dame Rebekah at the back. It was like we were a group of Spetsnaz agents, going from tent to tent. All of these first ogre groups were grouped up in gangs of three to five. They didn't stand a chance. This was their sleep time, and they were resting off a night of debauchery.

After the first four tents, we decided that we were going to need to get into some of the larger tents in the center. Dame Rebekah indicated to us that she had a spell that would mask the sounds of our combats, should we not be able to massacre them in their sleep. I told her that this was a great idea. She noted that she could only bring it forth twice, so we should definitely be certain about what we were doing. I looked to the rest and asked what they thought about wiping out the whole of the army. Faunra said that this would take a lot of time. I agreed, but said that it would completely demolish the ability of this Mokmurian to bring a raid down on the town. Jonathan said that he was in, but that we needed some way to deal with Dame Rebekah's inability to sneak around.

Faunra noted that Invisibility could help, but the foes that we were facing now were more likely to key in on invisible things than on things that were just sneaking. I noted that we could set her up with some camouflage and have her make the passes when we were certain that no one was looking. Dame Rebekah was okay with this, for the most part. We found some of the wax and oil and mixed in some of the dirt. I told them how important it was to break up the lines of the face, as that is what most things subconsciously look for. We did as such and headed to the next big tent. There were three big tents and one very large tent.

This first tent had six ogres in it, and we got set up so that Jonathan and Dame Rebekah could take out two apiece, while Faunra and I had one, and Faunra could try to pick up any that didn't get ended under the merciful ministrations of Jonathan or Dame Rebekah. Dame Rebekah cleanly beheaded the first one and slashed the other one with a lethal blow. Jonathan Dim Mak'd the first one, but only managed to get a punch in on the second one because it moved at the last second. Faunra dispatched it with an arrow almost flippantly after she buried two in the chest of the ogre that she was dealing with. I stabbed into mine and aside from the sound of burning flesh, it made no motion.

We all nodded and steadied ourselves. It wouldn't do to get worried or panicked or jumpy. We had Jonathan scout out the other two tents of a similar size to the one that we were in. Jonathan noted that there was another tent with six ogres in it, and the other one had seven. We got together and ushered Dame Rebekah into the next tent with six in it. We stealthily made our way into position. Jonathan again had two next to him, but the others were spread apart enough that we couldn't do that. There was one that was off to themselves in the corner.

I didn't like this set up, but between the two tents, this was likely the easier of the two. Dame Rebekah took the time to line up her attack, as did Faunra and myself. Jonathan was going to try to do his double hit again. The five of them fell to our attacks fairly readily. Jonathan walked over to the last one and straight up killed him with one punch. We were another tent down, and two left. Jonathan re-scouted the last tent before we headed back. When he came back, he noted that the Stone Giant Sentry up on the wall was starting to focus more heavily on this camp.

I asked him what he thought we could do about it. Jonathan noted that he could fly up and try to take it out, but that he wasn't one hundred percent certain that he could take it out before it could yell out an alarm. I asked if he had any other thoughts. Jonathan told me that he could keep an eye out for when the lookout changes position. Faunra offered up her Vanish spell, and Jonathan noted that the distance was less than one hundred feet to this next tent, but then we would still need something to help us to the last one. Faunra noted that she could do this at least once or twice more today.

We all gathered up together, and Faunra cast the spell on Dame Rebekah. We all stealthily rushed across the rubbish strewn courtyard to the second largest tent among the ogres. There were seven of them in this tent. And two of them were busy doing something best left to hillbilly horror flicks. They didn't notice us immediately, so we rushed in and made to attack the two who were still conscious. Faunra pulled up and shot the ogress on top with two arrows, causing her to slump over the ogre on the bottom, and fired another two arrows into him. He barely had time to think before my machete burned through his neck, leaving him bleeding out.

I looked around and noted that two looked to be stirring. Fortunately, they were within reach of Jonathan and Dame Rebekah, who took them both out. That left three ogres in a tenuous situation. They were not showing that they were awake, and the three of us who are best in melee moved into position. We all took aim and extinguished the lives of these three ogres. It is simply amazing how different the circumstance is from a few short weeks ago. Back at Hook Mountain, we would never think that we could just extinguish the life of giants like these, in numbers like these. After we cleaned our blades and fists, we took another moment to breath.

The last tent was the largest, and we would in all likelihood have to actually fight them. It didn't really worry me too much, I just didn't us to show our hand too quickly. We talked about this and I noted that we needed to keep an eye on this. I thought that if we could keep this quiet, we could even try to move on to another campsite and continue on our mission.

Faunra got Dame Rebekah set up with another Vanish spell and we rushed across the sickeningly quiet common area to the largest of the tents. We snuck in to the tent and we gave a look at what we were jumping into. It was a decadent orgy going on, with one exceptionally muscular male and several females. They were all awake, and it certainly didn't make the situation any easier. I looked to Dame Rebekah and nodded. She started casting a spell, and suddenly the sound went away from everything. It only took a second for the horde to realize what had happened. In that second, my rifle came out. Then the true violence started.

The Ogre at the center of the orgy, the muscle bound male, took three shots to the chest. All center mass, all burning in as they went. He tried to think about standing up, but the bullets had ricocheted around inside of his chest cavity, turning the whole area into ground sausage. Faunra dropped one of the ogresses with two arrows and hit another with the third arrow. Obviously, she was expecting a follow up. Jonathan leapt into the pile of them, and threw an enhanced cestus punch at one of them. He was a little shaky on the landing and only just barely knocked her out.

There looked to be some confusion before the first ogress launched a retaliatory attack, leaping up to attack Faunra and swinging at her with a meaty, sweaty fist. One that whiffed over Faunra's head without her needing to do more than barely sway a little. Another ogress who was closer to us, took the opportunity to try to swing on me. Her fist slammed into the chest plate of the armor and I barely even noticed it. I knew who was going to be on the receiving end next. One of the ones that were closest in the pile to Jonathan tried to get a grab on him, and couldn't even land a finger on him.

Then our brave Warpriest appeared, the spell being broken by her hostile action. She stepped out of nowhere to drop the one who tried to hit me, and then decapitated the one who tried to hit Faunra, deftly positioning herself between the majority of the ogresses and her ranged combatants, who were also just in front of the only egress. One of the ogresses learned this the hard way, as they ran past Dame Rebekah to try to attack Faunra, and received a vicious slash in repayment. The punch would have possibly hit, had Faunra not been paying attention. As it stands, she twisted a little and the fist went over her head, again.

The one that Faunra had hit second with her arrows reared back and kicked Jonathan. She kicked him so hard that the force field around him shattered and he still got hurt. Not nearly as bad as he would have, but still, ogress toenails in your gut. The last ogress of the harem took the opportunity to throw a javelin at me. The absolute shit construction meant that the blade shattered on the boron carbide breastplate, but it reminded me that I needed to have my head in the game.

Keeping that principle in mind, I fired three shots off, one at the ogress that had kicked Jonathan, one at the ogress that had thrown her javelin at me, and the final one at the giantess that had struck at Faunra, because we keep each other's six. I dropped all three into at least critical condition and unconsciousness. Faunra finished off the only one that remained standing. I signaled to the others that we should make our way to the next came quick. They all nodded and Dame Rebekah rushed over to the far side of the tent away from me. I could hear myself again and caught what she wanted.

I summoned up the gift of speed, and passed it along to everyone, including Niddler. He could possibly play a part if needed, or if not, he could make his escape that much quicker. We made our way to the base of the tower and quickly made our way to the next encampment to the north. It looked to be mainly stone giant women, and from what Dame Rebekah could indicate, while silent, they absolutely were evil. Then again, it seemed pretty obvious to me as well. We stealthily made our way to the first tent. There were eleven of these tents, but the occupants seemed to be more likely to be cognizant than the ogres were, so we judged that we would need to do some real kick in the door kind of activity.

We busted into the first tent and immediately wondered if our luck was amazing or terrible. We thought that we would be getting into one of the outsider tents, but we ended up in the main tent. With the head of this tribe. Wearing a finely crafted chain shirt. With her two best bodyguards. We were expecting maybe a giantess or two. Panic started to flood into my brain. I dropped three rounds into her chest without thinking, the small size of the bullet making its way through the rings of the chain shirt fairly easily. It didn't drop her though. I started to worry a bit more. Jonathan quickly responded to my action by launching a blast at one of the two bodyguards. We hadn't even taken out the first one and here we were, spreading out the damage.

Faunra dispelled my worrying fairly quickly. She fired off three arrows, dropping the chain shirt wearing leader and the bodyguard that Jonathan had blasted, and hitting the second bodyguard. Unfortunately, that second bodyguard covered the distance and struck Faunra strongly with her backswing. Faunra again went flying back. Dame Rebekah responded by charging in and hacking heavily with her enchanted adamantine sword, doing significant damage. I didn't have any more rounds in the mag, so I let the rifle slide back on its sling, willed my pistol into my palm and fired point blank into the side of the giantess, dropping her.

When we all calmed down for a few seconds and then I realized that the sound came back. I panicked for a second before I saw Dame Rebekah's face smiling. She whispered that we just managed to get that assault done. I asked what we should do next, since we were at a momentary pause point. Faunra and Jonathan started going over the room at rapid speed. We were still under the effects of the haste thing I did. I asked Faunra how long she thought that it would last. Faunra shrugged and noted that I didn't seem to follow a lot of rules for how magic worked that she knew, but that just being able to generate the effect meant that you could expect to last for thirty-six seconds, but that this had lasted longer than that.

I contemplated this for another few seconds while Faunra and Jonathan were rolling the bodies for loot. Faunra let out a little squee of excitement and produced a three-foot long wooden rod. Faunra told me that this was a rod of extending, that it would allow three spells a day to have their duration extended. I asked her what good this could do for us. Faunra said that we could have the haste effect extended, and then another effect that benefits all of us extended as well, then have Dame Rebekah utilize her silence effect extended, giving us much more time to get through more of these tents. I asked her if she thought that we would be able to get through all of the encampments today.

Jonathan snickered a little, and said that this was impossible, but that we could easily complete this series of tents, and if we are lucky, find our way to the next series of tents or get away from the Valley. I asked if they thought that it would be a good idea to utilize the spells to take out the guards at the towers, after dealing with the rest of these giants. The three of them smiled and said that this would definitely be a useful plan. Faunra confirmed that I could generate the effect one more time today and I told her that I could.

We loaded up everything of value and got around each other. We planned it out carefully, after figuring out just what everyone had prepared, and got ourselves situated, and then the casting and effects started up our retinue of spells and bonuses. Jonathan spent the whole thirty seconds pumping up his force field. It was fully recovered by the end of the thirty seconds. I focused on doing a lot of different things. I summoned up an unseen servant with the sole goal of reloading magazines for me, I amped up my observational skills, summoned up seven mirrored images of myself, brought up the app to allow me to see invisible things around me, and finally, when I touched the rod that was in Dame Rebekah's possession, reactivated the haste effect, just after the other one had ended.

Faunra took the opportunity to enchant some of my bullets temporarily to explode into fire when they strike, used a wand to invoke a suit of Force Armor around Jonathan, caused her outline to start blurring, enhanced her distance ability with her bow, and then summoned up her own five mirrored images. She didn't seem to appreciate that I had generated more than her. Dame Rebekah is the one who the whole plan hinged on. The first thing that she did was enchant the lot of us with an immunity to fire, including Niddler. She then invoked the dual sides of her heritage, getting quicker and smarter and stealthier. She then utilized the rod to create an extended protection from evil effect around all of us before handing the rod to me. She then invoked a blessing over all of us before grabbing the rod back to silence us again, casting it on a dagger that Jonathan grabbed before we all nodded and headed towards the flap

We took off like a silent death squad, pouring out of the tent and into the next closest one. Even with two giants in here, it didn't really slow us down. Jonathan made it into position in the same move that breached the tent, Dame Rebekah followed up, and Faunra and I took out stragglers. We swept through that camp like the plague, and eight more stone giants lost their lives. Afterwards Dame Rebekah certified to me that they were all evil, as if the torture devices didn't tell the story itself.

Jonathan got us quickly and quietly up the wall and we rushed the four towers in turn, not giving them much time to react. He could rush to any giant and be inside their zone with the silence effect, and his force fields helped him prevent any severe damage until one of the four of us caught up to him. Faunra played the role of long range sniper on the walls, and Jonathan used his telekinetic powers to thrust the dead body of the previous giant into the next one. The gore was astounding.

We cleared out the tops of those towers and made our way back to the gate where we saw a trio of bird women, harpies. They seemed to not notice us, what with the silence and everything, but that was fading. Jonathan focused up all of his might, struck a pose, and launched an enhanced shuriken at the first bird woman he saw, dropping it. The other two harpies noticed us and started to head towards us. Faunra hit a second harpy with three arrows from the distance we were at, the harpy failing to snatch up any that she was trying to grab, and I dropped it with a single round from my rifle. I took the last three shots at the other harpy, dropping it.

We all looked at each other and knew that the jig was up. Someone had to have noticed that. Even with the suppressor on we couldn't have gotten lucky enough that the occupants would have ignored that. We quickly tried to figure out where we should head, and I started to feel a draw towards the wall of cliffs on the alternate side of the valley from whence we had arrived. Everyone shrugged, and we went that direction. Jonathan took one of my offered grenades, and launched it into the giantess camp, hoping that the explosion would cause a sufficient distraction. We headed in the direction that my odd sense was telling me to go.

We travelled along the top of the walls, being careful to keep out of the line of sight of any of the various tribes that were just starting to stir. We rushed along until I found that the sense was urging me to head to a cave high up on the cliff face. I told Jonathan that and he found another large door to lift us up on. Dame Rebekah used a spell to generate a mist around ourselves as Jonathan lifted us up. We looked like a poor impression of a cloud, but we quickly made our way to the cave with Jonathan leading us.

When we entered the cave, the could dissipated and we got to see what it was. Jonathan gave a sniff and told us that this smelled like the dragon we slew. I asked him how he could be so certain, and he looked at me like I was stupid, before telling me that he skinned the dragon and made dinners with its body, he knew how the dragon smelled probably as good or better than the dragon itself. I asked what we should do, and Faunra noted that we should collect the spoils of our battle with the dragon and the giants. She summoned up the black tower and started shoveling all of the coins and treasure inside. Jonathan helped her.

I took up a watch at the mouth of the cave. Dame Rebekah came by to talk to me. This was when she told me that she could sense the evil in the groups that we had put down, and that we were doing not just Sandpoint, but all of Varisia, a great favor. She told me how she could sense the evil emanating from the one that was in the chain shirt, but that they all seemed to be evil in their own regard. Once all of the treasure that was in the cave was collected, Faunra asked if we should shrink back down the tower to its smaller size. We would not be able to reuse it tonight, but there was enough treasure in it that we wouldn't really be able to access it easily anyway. I laughed and told them that this wouldn't be the first time I had to hot rack. They looked confused and I promised to explain to them later.

I asked what way we should use to get back to the bikes and to head back to our safe spot. Jonathan shook his head, saying that we should camp out here tonight, and that he would head out to the bikes and bring them back, securely. Faunra offered up the last potion of invisibility, but he indicated that he didn't need it, as he could turn himself mostly invisible and fly at the same time, while lifting the heavy bikes. I told him that I wished him luck, and he said that he didn't need it.

Faunra, Dame Rebekah and I went about setting up the white tower with the beds from the black tower, and setting up some shelves in the black tower to make storage of everything easier. Apparently, the first giantess that we killed today had some decent magical equipment that Faunra was thinking about using to enhance our own equipment. We pooled all of the ragtag gear that we had collected during our mad swat attack, and Faunra sequestered herself in the Black Tower. I have a feeling that this is going to end up being her and Shalelu's home away from home once it gets expanded to include more space.

Jonathan came back after an hour with the two bikes, and noted that it was a little hairier out there. There were apparently a trio of wyverns strafing the sky, and their nest was below the cliffs. This also offered up another access port to everything, if we wanted to head to the bottom. I felt that we should discuss this at length later, and that we should get our rest in and look to getting prepared for whatever the fortress would throw at us.

Dame Rebekah and Faunra surprisingly agreed with me, and Jonathan spent some time setting up the front of the cave to look like no one had travelled this way in a long time. With the White Tower and the Black Tower operating as de-facto blockages in the tunnel, and our entrances pointed towards the back of the cave, we set up to get some dry rations. We didn't want to risk using fire and having smells spread. We figured out the watch rotation between the three of us, Jonathan, Dame Rebekah, and myself, with Faunra spending the night working on the equipment modifications that she was going to be generating from what all we had acquired.

During my watch, first watch thankfully, I used the Sending stone to send a message to Savah, telling her what had happened and getting an update on the chickens for Niddler. I'm going to have to see if we can get him something so that he can get information directly from his charges. I'm looking forward to only having to get four hours of sleep to be fully rested, and looking forward to what the day holds. I feel like I am on the cusp of some real understanding with melding my two vocations.